On 24 Oct 2018 at around 4:20 PM Satish came to me and said he registered for MCLS which would be on the precise following day from 8:30 AM to 2:30 PM at Hine Hall RM 132 and suggested me to enlist, however actually a few days ago, Heena is the one who came up with this but I didn’t care about it for some reason. They both tried to explain to me whatever they have contemplated MCLS but still, I don’t have any idea why I should register to MCLS and how that is related to me but however at last, with their insistence, I registered for MCLS with a thought and anxiety of what would happen there.

Starting at now, the great part is they offered free breakfast and Lunch.

We reached the seminar room on time. The room was quite pleasant with around 40 members and a retired Military General who is actually leading this seminar, and Marine Corps captains, commanders, colonels, and a few recruiters.

The Marine Corps staff drew near to the people and acquainted themselves, it was like a formal greeting before filling up the room with participants.

At around 9 AM the seminar started, the retired Military General who is the primary speaker. He shared his service experience for a bit and then he introduced his Marine Corp Staff and a Military Colonel who was the guest speaker for this seminar. Each commander shared their presentation time and explained the leadership principles, traits, morals, ethics and the differences among them. It was a great significant interaction with them.

HONOR

COURAGE

COMMITMENT

The above three core values are the foundations of Marine’s moral character and saturated into every Marine, and they said these are the building blocks for making the right decisions at the right time, both on and off the battlefield.

These three words grabbed my attention because these are the essential guidelines that anyone should have.

Honor is the backbone of our character that entitles the ethical and moral behavior.

Courage is the mental, moral and physical strength deep-rooted in individuals.

Commitment is the spirit of determination and dedication within a person. I perceive that everyone must have these values within them but it’s the time that will make us recognize them.

Later, there was a fascinating gaming session that happened. For that, they separated all participants into teams and arranged some interactive games to examine our leadership abilities and teamwork. Our team consists of six members and participated in four games. I got an opportunity to lead the team for the final game. The captain separately explained to me what the game was all about and rules that need to be followed while playing the game.

The Actual Game was….

There are some white papers kept on the floor separately, in that there is a starting point and an ending point (object). Everyone in the team should reach the endpoint by passing through these papers. The interesting thing is that we should assume that some of these papers contain landmines underneath them, so my team members should follow my directions and step through these papers to reach the object.

I started directing them towards the end point some of them reached half of the distance but they were killed because they reached on to a wrong paper (since there is a landmine underneath the paper) then I was little tensed for a while because there are only two more members remaining in the team who should reach the endpoint successfully without getting killed in order to win the game.

Moreover, my team is only the team that won all the three games which were held there.

Eventually, we got everyone’s attention and everybody started looking at the game. For a moment I thought that I have to be more conscious and careful about winning this game. Keeping that point in my view, I started directing the next person which is my final team member Heena.

Slowly, she moved step by step towards the endpoint and reached the goal without any obstacles.

Finally, we won the game. Everyone, who stood there cheered and appreciated us because we are the only team that won all the games and especially the last game which was quite thrilling. The captain appreciated me and congratulated us. Finally, It’s all about the teamwork and collaboration.

Lunchtime, they have provided different types of food and drinks. I chose Grilled Veggies and a water bottle. It was a good lunch.

Some people raised some personal questions to captains such as how their family life is etc. one captain said that he was with his family just for two years in his entire fifteen years of service. I felt so gloomy for that but I still can see his great commitment towards his nation.

Lastly, the guest speaker Colonel delivered his speech on ethical leadership. If you would ask me in brief, I brought up three points

TTB (Think Talk Behave)

E+R=O (Event + Response= Output)

Decision

Especially, at the decision, he stated a quote “when you born you look like your parents but when you die you look like your decisions” I liked it because it has a deep meaning even it has some humor in it.

That was a motivational time and also a valuable information that anyone should learn in their life. We got some gifts and also will get a certificate to put in a resume.

Earlier this year, a young man named Haihan Guo came to work with me on the WebHelp team at Indiana University. Haihan has not had much exposure to our culture – particularly the Indiana way of life. So I have decided to educate Haihan on the ins and outs of living in Indianapolis.

Everyone that knows me knows that I love to go out for lunch. It is not uncommon for me to send out a text or email early in the morning asking, “What’s for lunch?” This past Friday I decided to take Haihan to one of my favorite local spots for lunch – King David Dogs. The 20-minute walk from IUPUI to King David Dogs would give Haihan and me a chance to learn about each other.

Just as we started walking, Haihan noticed a small structure that puzzled him. He pointed to what I call a “porta potty” and calmly asked, “What is that?” He thought that I was joking when I told him that it was a toilet. He and I then took a tour of the small fiberglass lavatory. He was intrigued when he found that the bodily waste was contained openly inside the structure and crinkled his nose when he realized that each ensuing person to use this toilet got a dose of each person’s waste that used it before him. I got the feeling that Haihan would not be in any hurry to use a porta potty anytime soon.

We then moved on to our hotdog destination, but not without stopping at another location that caught his eye – the 9/11 Memorial on Ohio St. I had no idea that this memorial existed and was glad that Haihan paused to admire it. I regret not asking him what he thought of the 9/11 Attack. I will make a point to stop here again with Haihan.

We finally made it to King David Dogs. Haihan ordered the Chicago Dog and I ordered my “usual” – build-your-own with jalapeno’s, jalapeno mustard and two pickle spears. A colleague joining us for lunch, who was born and raised in Chicago, gave Haihan a valuable lesson about hotdogs – never put ketchup on a hotdog, only use yellow mustard. Haihan nodded his head in agreement.

On the walk back, Haihan explained that the hotdogs they have in China are more like sausages. These sausages are not served on bread/buns, as bread is not a common part of the Chinese cuisine. The sausages are served on a stick with peppers and onions. They are hand-made with a high salt content and are hung to dry for preservation.

I was surprised at how much I learned from Haihan and am looking forward to our next outing. Where should we go? Hmm…

Websites have evolved in the last 20 years since UITS was formed. Originally if you wanted a website you needed to have someone plan out a design, then make sure that files were as small as possible to ensure that the site loaded quickly on students dial up connections. You had to have a programmer take those designs and convert them to an HTML version that was generally static and edited with either the notepad editor or, if you had a license, the Dreamweaver editor. Finally you had to have a writer, make sure all the information fit in the window and was formatted so text was shown when the user loaded the page. All of this took many months to make sure everything was working correctly and that it looked good on someone’s specific computer monitors.

Over the past 20 years, browsers, screen resolutions, and connections to the internet have changed drastically. Users are now viewing your site in a multitude of ways, from laptops, to mobile phones. Connections have sped up to allow more graphics, videos and dynamic content to best get your message out to the masses.

In 2008 IU chose to purchase a CMS or content management system from the Atlanta based, Hannon Hill, nicknamed WCMS (Web Content Management System). This system uses XML/velocity and standard templates to build a site. Content is entered by any user on the system and results can be previewed in the browser window before the page is published to the live web account. One issue with this system was the lack of a template and the difficulty in getting the system setup, which still required all the original step described above.

A few years after the WCMS was setup at IU, the need for a quick setup for websites in the WCMS was apparent. So a small group of people within the WCMS group created IU Site Builder. A user could now request a Site Builder account and within a few days, the user could have a site ready to push content to their own URL. This setup provided a simple design and included some IU branding that the user could control. While this was a great way to get into the WCMS, colors and layouts were limited, and it was not mobile friendly and it didn’t have a lot of layout options.

Fast forward to 2015, the WCMS is more widely used, but people are still looking for a better way to display content. A collaboration between IU Communication and the UITS Communications office helps to setup the first Template in the WCMS that uses IU approved branding and works to keep styling and features centralized across all of the IU campuses, it was called the IU Framework.

While the framework is really considered more of a template, the back-end and a few commonly used features are integrated into the basic setup. With the IU Framework, users can request an account and just a few hours, have a dynamic website that can pull content from IU news & event feeds, display simple people profiles, link videos from YouTube or Vimeo, and pull in social media feeds from Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. All of this without the need for a single line of code. Users just need to follow the Prerequisites page on the IU Framework site and make sure they create all the needed accounts and URLs.

The need to update code in the IU Framework is reduced due to some updates being pushed to the framework sites automatically a few times a year, or manual updates that users can choose to install if a new feature comes out, generally once a quarter. There are step-by-step instructions that the account owner can follow or the owner can reach out to a developer who can help with these updates.

While the web accounts and IU Framework are free to setup, many users wish to reach out to the cost recovery departments on campus who have years of experience setting up web sites in the WCMS. You should check with your Department or Program to see if help is available for your site or you can view the Get Help From the Pros section on the IU Framework site.

The pros can help you with any needs you may have about setting up a custom site in the WCMS or using the IU Framework. From setting up a full site with professionally written content, to requesting and setting up the basic install on a new web account, or support for an existing Framework site.

Either direction you wish to go, the IU Framework will help you get information out to your students, staff or faculty easier and empower you to make updates to your own site content.

The Team

Over the last year, the WebHelp team has grown from four members to ten full-time and two part-time developers across two campuses (Indianapolis and Bloomington). The reach of the WebHelp team projects now spans the globe. Starting at home with UITS, two team members, Will Bobe and Patrick Wenzel, provide web and application services to areas within UITS through IT Communications. Jim Hoffman and Jim Smotherman lead IU Framework and C#/ASP.NET projects with four other team members – Alvaro Diaz, Haihan Guo, Stephen Morrow and Heena Khanam. This sub-group of two team leads and four developers provides web and application services and ongoing support to IU schools and departments. These services include new developments, content migrations, bug fixes, and feature enhancements. Satish Garneni and Venkata Bhupathi support Kumo, a cloud storage connector system developed by IU, that is licensed by universities world-wide.

This blog was started as part of a team-and-skill-building activity for WebHelp and is maintained by the team members to share updates about the team and about technology. As WebHelp manager, I am happy to see the team grow not only in numbers, but also in skills. Over the next several months, the team members will be working to achieve three goals, presentation, blogging, and community service, and earn a trophy for each completed goal.

Presentation: Speaking in front of a group is a valuable skill for everyone. It requires some level of confidence, deep knowledge of content, the ability to stay focused on the subject matter, and to evaluate body-language feedback and adjust the presentation accordingly.

Blogging: Good writing is another such skill that helps with clear communication. It requires the ability to understand the audience, organize the content, and convey the message clearly and accurately. This part of the activity resulted in the creation of this blog.

Community Service: Most of us get caught up in a circle that includes family, friends, and work. It is good to pause from time to-to-time and look at the bigger picture; one that includes our community. WebHelp team prides itself in being a service unit and sees the value in staying connected with the community.

Upcoming team events:

On September 21st, the team will be hosting the IU Hackathon. At this event, developers from all units of Indiana University will come together and work in teams on one or more projects to benefit IU as a whole. IU Hackathon will provide an opportunity to share best practices and to connect with the IU developer community while working collaboratively on projects for the organization. Registration is open until the end-of-day August 31,2018 and group size is limited to the first 75 registrants. If you are a database, front-end, or back-end developer at IU, please join us for a day of learning and sharing.

At the Statewide IT Conference 2018, the team will host a Topic Table to provide details about WebHelp services and showcase sample work. Jim Hoffman will also be presenting at the IU Framework session and panel discussion. If you are attending the Statewide IT 2018, please stop by the WebHelp table.

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